


Present Tense

by thewickedloki



Series: Inversionverse [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewickedloki/pseuds/thewickedloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a year since Loki disappeared into the Nothingness. Jane and Sif know the dangers of hope if it fails, but some things can't be ignored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Tense

Jane froze in the doorway and blinked at least seven times to be sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. With a soft sigh, she shook her head and shrugged out of her jacket. “Hi, Fandral. Forget your pants again?”  
  
“I was informed that you would be elsewhere at a conference for some days yet, Jane. I assure you I would have worn pants if I’d known you were returning early.”  
  
“Dude, how do I still have whipped cream in my–” Darcy froze the moment she stepped into the kitchen, Fandral’s cape wrapped around her shoulders. The only other item of clothing Jane could see were purple and blue polka dot socks.  
  
“Please tell me you’re not naked.”  
  
“Nope.” Darcy fanned the cape out to reveal a tank top and panties that inexplicably matched her socks. “You’re home early.”  
  
“Something came up. Last two days of the conference were cancelled. Could we not have a conversation while you’re all naked? Or wearing capes?”  
  
Darcy’s eyebrows rose. “But he’s usually wearing a cape. Why can’t I wear a cape?”  
  
“I must beg your forgiveness once again.”  
  
“It’s fine. I’ll just get my stuff and head to the library.”  
  
Darcy wrapped herself in the cape again. “Could you stop at the store on your way back? We’re out of whipped cream.”  
  
Jane rubbed her hand across her eyes. “There’s this line, Darcy, where we don’t give each other certain details.”  
  
She blinked. “What line?”  
  
Fandral cleared his throat. “I’ll go find my clothes and take my leave, shall I?”  
  
Jane waved her hand. “No, no, don’t let me ruin your evening. I’ll head out.”  
  
“Jane, I insist. I’ll not force you out of your own home.” He cleared his throat. “If you would just be so kind as to avert your eyes for a brief moment so that I’ve no need to render your dish towel unpalatable.”  
  
Jane turned around and sighed heavily. Darcy grinned.

 

***

 

Sif rubbed the back of her hand across her brow with a fierce grin. “You’re certainly getting your enthusiasm back. Again.” The recruit gave her a bright smile and swing his practice sword around, and Sif dropped her shield to block. “Good, but watch your balance. If I had a spear I’d knock you flat on your face.”  
  
“Yes, my lady!”  
  
She nodded and put the recruit through his paces, quietly impressed with how quickly Asgard’s soldiers were falling into their newer, stricter routines. Since the attack on Gladsheim nearly one year ago, it had been a feat to not only strengthen Asgard’s defenses, but also to reassure its people that all would ultimately be well.  
  
The most difficult of the battles they’d fought had been to keep themselves together after Loki had disappeared. By now, she was sure that only Thor and Frigga truly believed that Loki was still alive somewhere. The rest of Asgard believed—or at least hoped—that he had died rather than become trapped in the Nothingness, or had been flung to the far reaches of the cosmos beyond the branches of Yggdrasil, and therefore beyond even the queen’s power.  
  
Fandral had at least found solace on Midgard, befriending Jane Foster as he spent increasingly long stretches of time with her funny little friend Darcy Lewis. She had to admit to liking Darcy; she reminded Sif of Fandral when he was much younger, before the years had put those shadows in his eyes that only his closest friends were able to see. Fandral was able to smile again, even to laugh, and she was glad for it. Mourning was difficult for all of them, but it seemed to especially dampen her friend’s usually high spirits. Fandral was the most cheerful and joyous of them all, constantly reminding them to put fear aside and enjoy what happiness could be found, but he had sworn loyalty to Loki personally. More than that, Fandral and Loki had forged a strong, strange friendship over the years, sharpened with wit and sarcasm that would generally bring Loki at the very least to a smile, even when he was in one of his somber moods. Fandral had been hit especially hard by this loss, nearly as hard as Thor.  
  
For Thor, the mourning may have lessened over the past year, but if it had, only slightly. Sif’s heart ached each time she saw how dimmed his eyes had become, how muted his smiles were. She could scarce remember the last time she’d heard him truly laugh. She had tried everything, from holding him in her arms each night as the nightmares took him and soothing him with gentle words, to dragging him to his favorite places and tempting him with song and friendship, to sharp words meant to snap him out of his melancholy even into anger. Anger would have been better than this. Thor was not meant to be lost. Thor was the strongest of them all, his happiness the most pure, and yet he carried the heaviest burdens.  
  
As the recruit laughingly took his leave of her, Sif was unsurprised to look up and see the familiar silhouettes of Huginn and Muninn circling the training yard. She sheathed her sword and put her shield on her back, seeking and finding the Allfather as he turned back toward the great hall of Gladsheim.  
  
Sif caught up with him easily and fell into step just behind him, pressing her fist to her heart with a low bow. “My king. I trust you are pleased with the soldiers’ progress.”  
  
“I am, though I am rarely displeased with your progress with them, Lady Sif.” He held out his arm, one of the ravens alighting just below his elbow as the other drifted lazily into the hall. “I have not seen my son today,” he said as he walked with her into Gladsheim.  
  
Sif swallowed. “Nor I, my king. He was… disquieted last night.”  
  
Odin’s shoulders seemed to drop as he sighed. “Nightmares haunt us all, but Thor’s pain seems to eclipse all of Asgard.”  
  
“He has always been close to Loki.”  
  
“He has. Closer than even I was, and it was I who first held Loki in my arms.” The raven beat its wings twice and took to the air, and Odin turned to face Sif. “I have thought of you as my daughter since your father and I first discussed your betrothal to my son.”  
  
Sif dipped her head. “And I have always been grateful of that, my king. I have thought of you as a second father.”  
  
He studied the hall around them, and for the first time in her life, Sif felt sure that the Allfather could not meet her gaze, rather than the other way around. “I have failed my son, Sif,” he said after a time. “In trying to protect him, I caused him greater pain than anyone should ever need endure. I disowned him after insisting, through his entire life, that I loved him as dearly as Thor. That is a greater sin than what Laufey did to him.”  
  
Her knees felt suddenly weaker. “...my king, you did what you thought necessary to keep him safe, and then to protect Asgard—”  
  
“Tell me truly, Sif. What good is a king if he cannot at once be a father?” He turned his gaze to her at last. “When you sit in Frigga’s seat and rule this realm beside my son, do not think yourself a queen. Think yourself a mother. My gravest mistake was thinking myself a king before thinking myself a father. I sacrificed my son for the realm.” He turned away from her with his hands clasped behind his back. “The queen would see you, once you’ve finished with your training.”

 

***

 

“Hey, Fandral?”  
  
He turned, fastening the last button of his shirt. “Yes, dearest Jane, how may I be of service?”  
  
“You’ve been coming to visit for about a year now.”  
  
He grinned and sank onto the couch next to Darcy, draping an arm around her shoulders and smiling broadly. “I have, and it has been an exquisite pleasure. I must thank you again for your continued hospitality, sweet woman.”  
  
Jane closed her notebook and tucked her feet under her, for a moment wishing the recliner would swallow her whole. “You haven’t talked about Loki since you came here with Thor and Sif and the others.”  
  
The smile didn’t fade so much as gradually dissipate into a shadow of itself, the usual glimmer in his eyes replaced by something dark and hollow that seemed more horrible on the face of someone who was usually so happy he made people within a two mile radius start grinning for no reason. Fandral kept his arm around Darcy’s shoulders, but the openness and warmth was gone. Darcy drew her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees, suddenly very interested in her socks.  
  
“No, I haven’t.”  
  
“Would you?”  
  
He sighed, jaw working, and rested his arms on his thighs, hands loose. “I cannot be completely certain which of us I was seeking to protect in not speaking of him,” he said quietly, leaning forward. “Loki was… there was no one like him in Asgard. It had nothing to do with being Jotun-born. He was just so… so clever. Everything was a game of logic and riddles with him, every encounter was a chance to study behavior and manipulate it if he could, just for the sake of doing so. We’d go for days, weeks even, without seeing someone, and it would turn out that Loki’d turned them into a piglet or made them invisible unless they were submerged in water, just to see what would happen.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “And he was always thinking. That’s why we got on so well, I think. Between the two of us, we were convinced we could charm the whole of the nine realms if need be. The only way dealing with ambassadors was bearable some years was to make wagers with him as to which of us could gain the most offers of either marriage or bedsport. Everything was a game, but more than a game. He invested himself in every play he made, because it was a test to see just how clever he could be.”  
  
Jane felt herself smiling. “It always seemed like he was trying to plot something while he was here.”  
  
“Oh, he very likely was, and I’d be willing to wager my sword that he had multiple schemes hatching at any given time.” The ghost of a smile faded, and he held Jane’s eyes. “Loki was a remarkable man who sometimes pushed things a little too far. Your Norse mythology is far from accurate on many counts, but the basic spirit of it is correct. Loki was the god of mischief, not just for its own sake, but to make us better. He forced us all to think about what we did and why, about how to get ourselves out of the most remarkably convoluted messes.”  
  
“So what about bringing the Frost Giants into Asgard?” Darcy turned to look at Fandral, and he fell back against the couch cushions.  
  
“He had his reasons. Thor was… well, he was impulsive. I love him dearly, as I loved Loki. They’ve both been like brothers to me for more years than I can count. I mean this as no disrespect.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “But Thor was impulsive, as all young men are, and the idea of the throne was still a romantic notion to him. Perhaps Loki saw that he wasn’t ready for the heaviness of Asgard’s crown. Perhaps he feared Thor would say or do something that would goad another of the realms into war against us. Perhaps he was envious of Thor and resented the fact that as the younger brother, he wouldn’t have a chance to rule Asgard. That’s what a good portion of the realm is saying, and frankly, I’d be shocked if that didn’t at least play a small part.”  
  
“But you don’t think he was selling you guys out?”  
  
“No, Darcy, I don’t.” He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’ve known Loki for centuries, and while we’ve all been egotistical and self-serving from time to time, there is a limit. Loki wouldn’t have committed treason simply to satisfy his pettiness. He loves Asgard, as we all do.”  
  
“You said loves,” Jane said suddenly, her eyes locking on Fandral. He cleared his throat.  
  
“It is difficult to alter centuries of speech in a single year, Jane.”  
  
She shook her head. “No, you’ve been using the past tense right up until you said he loves Asgard. Present tense.”  
  
He ran his hand across his face. “Jane, I assure you, even with as fond as you were able to grow of Loki in the few days he was with you, no one wishes him back more than his friends of hundreds of years, or his family. The odds of Loki having survived something of that magnitude are infinitesimal.”  
  
“But not non-existent.”  
  
“Jane, look at me, please.” Fandral leaned forward again. “I wish, more dearly than you can possibly fathom, that there was a way for us to find Loki and bring him home, for him to still be alive. I also know, from many more years of horrifically painful experience than I care to divulge, how indescribably painful false hope is.”  
  
“So it’s better not to hope at all?”  
  
“It is better to be realistic. If even Heimdall could not see him, and his lady mother could not use all of her vast magics to find him, what hope is there?”  
  
“A small one,” she said, sliding out of the chair and moving toward the door. “About as slim as finding an Einstein-Rosen bridge.”

 

***

 

Frigga in trance was not a sight one ever grew used to, no matter how many years one spent in the palace. Sif held herself rigid in the doorway, gooseflesh rising on her arms as she watched the clouds spinning around the queen’s great wheel like the threads of fate woven by the Norns. She wished suddenly for her cloak, though but minutes ago she had been considering how warm she was even in her dress.  
  
“Sif, if you continue standing in the doorway like a frightened rabbit, I will begin to question your sobriety.” Frigga’s voice was smooth and cool as river water, and her eyes opened languidly to fix on Sif with a distant, almost cosmic amusement. “You never display such fear when you are in your right mind.”  
  
She swallowed and bowed deeply. “Forgive me, my queen, I… well, this is a bit beyond me.”  
  
“I need you to find Thor,” she said, her body swaying as she spun the clouds. “I need him to make it rain.”  
  
Sif blinked. “You… yes, my queen, but I… Thor has been missing today.”  
  
“Then speak to your brother,” she replied. “The Gatekeeper’s eyes have not grown less sharp over time. He will know where Thor is. Tell him to make it rain.” Her smile was frightening, though Sif could not quite determine why. “I need more clouds to spin if I am to find Loki.”  
  
Her brows furrowed. “...my queen, I mean no disrespect, but how…”  
  
“Loki has the ring.” Her smile widened. “Andvaranaut is cursed, Sif. It would not allow him the mercy of a peaceful death amongst the stars. Andvaranaut would have kept him alive.”  
  
“You cannot know this for certain, surely.”  
  
Frigga’s eyes slid to Sif’s, and the force of her gaze set Sif’s spine as stiff as a steel rod. “I would know if my son had died. Find Thor, I require more clouds. Tell him to make it rain, and I will find his brother.”

 

***

 

“So, hey, crazy lady, wanna share your little epiphany with the class?” Darcy tugged her sweatshirt onto her arms as Fandral held the roof access door open for her.  
  
“The conference was cancelled because of a ‘classified event,’ and Erik wasn’t there. Erik hasn’t missed one of these conferences in eleven years.”  
  
Darcy yanked Fandral closer and huddled in his cape. “Maybe he was sick?”  
  
“What are the odds of Erik being sick at the same time as a radioactive anomaly and sudden spikes in gamma radiation at the top-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. subterranean labs in southern Nevada?”  
  
Fandral blinked and furrowed his brows. “Wouldn’t the designation of ‘top-secret’ mean that you were not meant to know its location?”  
  
Darcy grinned. “Everybody underestimates the poli-sci major.”  
  
Fandral’s eyebrows shot up. “What, exactly, did you do?”  
  
“I got my schmooze on.”  
  
“She was eaves-dropping.”  
  
“Hey, I was doing covert reconnaissance, thank you very much.” She nodded smugly. “I got one of those police scanners and figured out which frequency the government goons were using while they were still in New Mexico cleaning up King Loofah and his blue dudes.”  
  
“Then we researched and found a plot of land north of Las Vegas that seemed promising, I made a phone call to a friend of mine at NASA, hooked up a satellite imaging feed…”  
  
“That was useless until I called my ex who works for Google now. Location-based mapping apps are where it’s at. Big money there.” She slapped Fandral’s chest lightly, then pointed. “That’s where you want to invest, my friend.”  
  
Fandral shook his head slowly. “I have no idea what you’ve just said.”

 

***

 

As the storm clouds gathered overhead, Sif tugged her cloak more tightly around herself and watched Thor. Heimdall had insisted that she tell Thor what Frigga had surmised, and the sudden fervor in his eyes made her wary. If he’d regained hope of Loki being found, only to have it dashed away again…  
  
Thor spun Mjolnir with such ferocity the lightning itself seemed to tremble when he called it, and the clouds were sucked into the open window of Frigga’s chamber as soon as they formed. Huginn and Muninn called to each other as they circled frantically over where the Allfather stood, his gaze torn between his wife and his son. Sif ached for her shield and sword now, though there was no danger from Thor’s lightning and her arms would do her little good even if there was.  
  
No, the danger was that this could be the queen’s final effort, and if it failed, Sif wasn’t sure that any of them would be able to move beyond that despair.  
  
Sif watched the walls of Gladsheim as though she expected them to burst into flame, then closed her eyes and swallowed. Perhaps there was reason yet to hope. Perhaps Loki was not lost to them forever, perhaps…  
  
Huginn and Muninn plummeted toward the ground, crowing so loudly they sounded like children’s cries. Sif opened her eyes in time to see Thor take off from the ground and land moments later on Frigga’s balcony. She hiked up the dress and sprinted toward the gates, but even though she ran she did not catch up to the Allfather until she reached Frigga’s chambers.  
  
The queen was on the floor, her spinning wheel splintered and broken into at least six different pieces. Her eyes were wide and wild, unseeing as they flicked about the room while she dug her fingers into Thor’s arm. Odin was shouting her name while Thor struggled to help her to her feet, his eyes finding Sif’s and more terrified than she’d ever seen them. She rushed to his side and put an arm around the queen’s waist.  
  
Frigga’s pupils spun back down to their usual size and locked on Thor. “Loki lives,” she murmured, voice hoarse, and surged to her feet as though she had not collapsed but seconds before. She stared at Odin. “Loki lives.” Her voice broke into near hysterical laughter, and Thor pulled her into a tight embrace. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he buried his face in Frigga’s hair. “Loki lives,” she said again, and Sif wept with them.

 

***

 

Jane’s eyes widened as she looked over the equipment, and Darcy’s hand tightened on the back of her shirt. “You’re seeing this, too, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“My calculations aren’t off. I calibrated everything to the settings we had last year and adjusted for the temperature and barometric pressure.”  
  
Fandral rested a hand on each of their shoulders and peered at the screens. “What do you see?”  
  
Jane smiled more brightly than she’d smiled in the past year. “There was another event. Not the same as when the Bifrost touched down, more like the readings from the Tesseract we were able to borrow from S.H.I.E.L.D.”  
  
“Jane means steal.”  
  
“I mean borrow.”  
  
“You didn’t exactly give them back.”  
  
“You can’t give information back.” She tilted the screen and pointed. “This originated outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, Fandral.”  
  
His jaw dropped. “There was power from outside of Yggdrasil.”  
  
“And it touched down outside of Las Vegas, right where the gamma readings spiked, and that gamma signature matches the Tesseract’s. That’s exactly where S.H.I.E.L.D.’s been keeping the Tesseract, and that’s where the energy touched down.”  
  
Darcy cleared her throat. “I’m excited, too, but we don’t know for sure what that means.”  
  
“It’s him,” she said, turning back to the screen. “It has to be him.”  
  
Fandral let his breath out slowly. “I wish to believe this as much as you do, but how can you be certain?”  
  
“Because energy moving toward the Earth at that velocity should have gone right through the crust of the planet, but it didn’t. It stopped. It stopped right where the gamma spike was located.”  
  
“That does not necessarily mean…”  
  
“We’re getting a print-out!” Darcy hurried toward the printer, hands stuffed into the sweatshirt pockets. Jane held Fandral’s eyes.  
  
“If this isn’t Loki, then it’s some other being with the capacity for intergalactic travel who knows exactly where the Tesseract is.”  
  
He nodded. “I would much rather believe that it is Loki.”  
  
“Who else knows how to use the energy backlash from the Tesseract to open a hole in space-time?”  
  
“I should like to hope that there are few, if any.”  
  
Darcy shoved a paper under Jane’s nose, and her eyes widened. “Darcy, how did you…” Her cell phone rang, and she jumped before digging it out of her pocket. “Hello?”  
  
“Dr. Foster, this is Agent Phil Coulson with S.H.I.E.L.D.”  
  
“What just happened? I saw the gamma spikes and then what looked like another Einstein-Rosen bridge.”  
  
“We need you to remain exactly where you are. Agents from the Santa Fe field office are on their way to escort you and Ms. Lewis to safety.”  
  
“Why must you be escorted to safety?” Fandral narrowed his eyes. “Darcy, put that device on that setting.”  
  
“Speaker-phone. You got it.” She plucked the phone from Jane’s hand and pressed a button. “Yo, Coulson, how’s it hangin’?”  
  
“Miss Lewis, are you and Dr. Foster inside?”  
  
“No, we’re outside looking at our equipment. What’s going on? What was that energy spike, and why do we need to go into protective custody?”  
  
“Dr. Foster, there’s been an incident at our facility in Nevada, and we need to ensure that you and Miss Lewis are safe. Some of our agents have been compromised. Get inside and wait for S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s for your own safety.”  
  
“What manner of incident is this?” Fandral glanced up as he spoke. “There are safer places than in the company of your agents if there is true danger.”  
  
“You’re one of the Asgardians.”  
  
“Fandral, yes, I am.”  
  
“Well, Fandral, you might want to phone home quickly. It doesn’t look like our friend is in his right mind.”  
  
“Loki,” Jane whispered. “Loki’s alive.”  
  
“Dr. Foster, you need to–”  
  
Jane dropped the phone as white static jumped from the buttons, zapping her fingertips. It clattered to the ground with a soft hiss of black smoke trickling from underneath the face plate. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention, and her eyes widened as she looked at the roof access door.  
  
Loki swayed, steam rising from his skin. “Jane,” he whispered, then collapsed to his knees.


End file.
